


painting you (hurts)

by apricty



Category: TOMORROW X TOGETHER | TXT (Korea Band)
Genre: Falling In Love, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Ocean, Painting, Portraits, Roses, Strangers to Lovers, hand holding, they were in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28943430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricty/pseuds/apricty
Summary: Kai's job is to paint the portrait of a boy who will get married in a few months, a boy he has learned everything of…a boy he has fallen in love with.“May our bitter-sweet love be memorable for us, hyung.”
Relationships: Choi Beomgyu/Huening Kai
Comments: 22
Kudos: 43
Collections: TXT through the world





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the beat of [Je te laisserai des mots](https://open.spotify.com/track/0V5cvmTKsYmF5FmGGEAfmS?si=9IgASFiVRh-YMr4vb9Uw5A) _(I'll leave words)_ , inspired by Portrait de la jeune fille en feu directed by Céline Sciamma, and Le Petit Prince written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

"Et quand tu seras consolé (on se console toujours) tu seras content de m'avoir connu."

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, _Le Petit Prince._

The first words I ever wrote about him were: 'He's immature, spoiled, impertinently loud, rude and pitiful'. I don't think I was entirely wrong.

He was all of those things, but all of those words were not everything that he was. There wasn't much to our first meeting, not much besides me not being able to forget the disgust in his eyes, or his peachy lips moving. The beauty someone holds can't always be seen at first sight, though his was undeniable, there had to be more, I thought.

There was much more to the heart.

It was February 13 when I stepped inside his house, a rugged place situated near the ocean. A lighthouse rose from the east and blush-hued sand surrounded it all. I walked in with damped hair, dirty clothes full of sand, and the weight of twenty rocks on my case. A disdainful stare welcomed me.

"If you look like this… I don't want to imagine your work," the boy said to me, his voice was calm, in contrast to his eyes.

I didn’t reply, not because I didn’t want to, but because I got caught up in his stare. He looked at me from head to toe with a raised eyebrow and walked away. It made my heart sting.

I might never forget the way the boy looked under the faint beam of light coming from the circular window at the entrance. Nor the way he walked down the stairs and past me, like flying, like the floor was made out of clouds.

“He's not always like that,” an old lady said to me, and she disappeared behind the tall wooden doors as soon as I turned to look for her.

"Don't worry about him," his mother, of beautiful eyes and fair hair, later told me while walking down the stairs. "I have to send the portrait before March ends. I trust you to finish it by then, Mr. Huening."

It was her the one who sent me the letter, a small woman of beautiful eyes and smooth walk, wearing a long pink dress. Ms. Choi was as beautiful as her son, as soft and sharp as him, and their eyes shined with the same light, faint, dim.

My father once told me about how incredibly sad it is that we can’t remember the details of those days we cherish the most. The unforgettable days are often remembered with a word or two, an image flashing in front of our eyes that unravels the story we long to feel, but the real essence always goes missing.

I was scared of what my father had said to me, of forgetting the most beautiful yet simple moments in my life; therefore, I started writing in a little diary when I was ten, annotating every small detail to eye and heart I could catch. I made use of a bit less of a hundred diaries but never missed a thing, I remember even the days I wish I wouldn't.

There are, without a doubt, many beautiful stories in those pages, much more beautiful, heartbreaking and breathtaking than the one I’m writing now.

But this one is special.

There is always that one unexpected love at the start of _life_ , that one you feel you'll never forget because it adheres to you like oil paint to fabric, it comes off with time if you are patient enough, if not, you may end up throwing the piece away. It's always the thing you try so hard to give up on that haunts you the longest.

I was around twenty then, when my family had financial issues going on. Though I was more of a writer and a musician than a painter, this last one was what got me money the most at the time, and what I had tried to give up on millions of times.

A letter, written on black tint and cursive, made me go back to it. It came from Brittany in France and read along the lines of,

_‘Since my needs are as big as yours, let’s do each other a favor, paint my son’s portrait’._

His was the very last portrait I ever painted.

After we first locked eyes, I waited for him. He locked himself inside his room for a week, because he refused to meet me.

“It will take a while until he decides to walk out of there,” the old lady stopped chopping the carrots, she never really told me her name, nor introduced herself besides being 'the one who keeps the house clean and going'. We spent the week in the kitchen, me, the graphite between my fingers and paper on the table, making her company. “He’ll comply in the end, he always does.”

“Why does he refuse if he’ll end up doing it anyway?” I asked.

“Maybe to enjoy the feeling of having control of his life for a while,” she chuckled while shaking her head.

“He trapped himself in a place from which he can easily escape, but he won’t try to go away…?” I thought about it long through the days, while sitting at the small wooden table beside the sound of burning wood and boiling water.

During those nights I would hear the constant screaming of a raging mother, ‘Do it for the family!’ and ‘I should’ve run away too!’ as a response, both never missed a chance to make themselves present. It wasn’t pleasant to listen to constant hysteria for four nights straight. However, that’s how I learned his name, not through formal introductions or small talks. Her mother screamed outside his door, _Choi Beomgyu! Walk out!_.

_Choi Beomgyu._

“Why did his brother run away?” I asked the old lady once, she had briefly talked about the situation before, with few words and no explanations.

“He had an arranged marriage,” she sat beside me at the table. “One day, he wasn’t here anymore. Everything the family had left was a good-bye letter and debts for years.”

"And now he is the one getting married… He is choosing to stay?" she nodded.

It was much to my surprise meeting—while not _knowing_ him—someone who lived like that. Who kept going, like myself.

I tried to replicate his face from memory, recalling the way he walked down the stairs, the way light beamed on his face framing it and coloring it with pink and ocher undertones. He was wearing that linen poet shirt he always loved to wear, slightly open from the chest.

I tried drawing him from memory, but it wasn’t enough. I needed more of him.

And my pledges might have worked when the day after plastering on the walls of my room an exhibit of sketches of his face, of paper scattered on the floor, and hands tainted by the graphite, he ran outside.

Beomgyu-nim ran to the coast, down the pink granite rocks, and left his boots aside. He was out of breath and so was I for running behind him, that was my chance.

I kneeled on the sand a few steps apart, the blue ocean's waves crashed against the rocks and the salt in the air hit on my face, the air was fresh… a bit too much.

"It is cold," I told him, he didn't reply.

He kept his eyes on the water, looking far where the sea and the sky connect. He sat there until the night fell, and I could only see the way his hair, dark brown and fair, fell behind his ears, it curved just a little until touching his earlobe. The wind made it messy.

He sat spreading his legs and breathing heavily, for moments his eyes closed and his lashes looked longer when they touched his cheeks. He looked peaceful yet disturbed, in the middle of a quiet coast with raging wind.

We walked back to the house once I placed my coat over his small frame, he didn't deny my help, but he didn’t look at me either.

That night I made small progress drawing sketches of his face, his curled hair, his tall nose, and his lashes looked more… like his own. But none of my attempts were good enough to capture him.

After then, Beomgyu-nim started to walk to the coast often. He didn’t wait for me, so I dragged my feet behind him like a puppy. I sat closer to him each day, a step closer. I felt like I had to approach him slowly. He was like a scared creature in the wild that I was trying to catch.

The sketches started to look much better when I looked at him who seemed to enjoy walking on the shoreline. He, who closed his eyes tight when the sun started going red. He, who fidgeted with the ring in his finger every once in a while and held back his tears at the touch of it. This small detail I noticed from the way his breathing changed and his head was left hanging.

I took my journal when he walked out, so I wouldn’t miss a detail of him. His fingers were slim and long and the ends were slightly thicker, his skin was pale, his frame was small like that one of a teen, his side profile… was beautiful.

Every day, there was something beautiful in the way the sky shined behind his face, framing his profile, his tall nose, his plush lips, his jawline, and his hair falling over his face, or the way his earlobe curved just in the right place. There was something beautiful in the way his eyes were slightly open just like his mouth, and how under the light of a shy sun they turned pink.

There _was_ something about him.

"Let me paint you," I told him one of those times I found myself lost in the view of him, more like begging than asking for his will.

"You've been doing so already, haven't you?" he sighed and looked at me, his stare fell to my scribbled diary. "Fine, the faster we end with this, the better."

It took him a while to sit on the chair wearing his vest, velvet navy blue with golden accents, his pants were white and his boots black. From the way he sat to the way his hands were placed it was obvious he knew how to pose, his jawline was sharp and his eyes looked at nowhere. I was glad his eyes weren't looking at me nor my mess of apron. I wouldn’t know how to paint such eyes.

The light that entered the window fell over his face.

I sketched the face I had been seeing for days nonstop, the face whose lines my hands knew perfectly how to trace and where to shade.

 _His_ face.

When sitting in front of him, there was not much that would come out of my mouth or into my mind, this last one, occupied by his lost stare and the purpose of his portrait. He wouldn't say a word either, so most times I took it upon me to talk.

"Are you ready?" he looked at me confused, “the wedding, I mean."

"Her family has to like this first, then we'll see."

"But are you ready if they say yes?"

He relaxed his body and looked at me. "One is much more ready for those things one wants to avoid but know will come, than those one desperately wishes to come but don't know if they will, Kai-ssi."

Beomgyu-nim was one of a kind, he spoke slowly and softly, with his chin high and his words wise. I didn’t agree with him every time even if his voice tried to convince me, but there was no way for me to deny his world view, for it was unique. I used to write in my diary tons of pages per day about whatever he had said and whatever I tried to understand, it was impossible to narrow it down to a few words.

 _The details._ Though his face was engraved in my mind after staring for what I’d say too long, the details were still the hardest part to draw.

I showed the painting to him, a painting I felt was finished, but his eyebrows furrowed at the look of his face and he leaned on it confused, his hands on his back.

“You don’t know how to paint… me,” he looked at me deep in the eyes, and without a sign of doubt in his words he continued. “You don’t know how to paint me,” a soft smile on his face.

“Have you ever painted?” I asked in disbelief.

“I have,” he lifted his chin, “many times.”

“What do you paint?”

“People.”

“Your cryptic way of replying…" I sighed, because that was his way of convincing others to keep asking if they really wanted to know, and I was the type who really wanted to know. "What kind of people?”

“The people I can paint,” I looked at him, exasperated, evidently tired, but he smiled at me and replied to the question my eyes implied. “I paint those I love.”

Beomgyu-ssi painted the people he knew best, in his own way. He walked to the door and without looking back at me, he said, “I’ll help you paint me right.”

He came every other day to check on his face, he disapproved of every other side-eyeing me and rolling his eyes, no words. Though looking at the portrait wasn’t the same as looking at him, I couldn’t pinpoint my error.

Each time I ended up sitting with my head in my hands and a blurred gray face on the canvas. "This is what I was taught to do!" I rambled to him.

"One has to forget about rules to create real art! Don’t let rules cage the potential in you," he stood behind me, "Is this yours because you created it or because you put part of yourself making it?" his arm surrounded me as he pointed to the canvas, "Is this art because you are using fancy colors and millions of brushes or because it evokes emotions?" then, ever so softly he held my chin and turned my face to him, "The best kind of art doesn’t always come from following the rules."

"It is just a portrait, what emotions should it evoke?"

He shook his head, "That's not me," he said before he walked out.

Though he irked me in some ways, I liked to listen to him talk, and I'd make random questions once in a while when we were together. After a while, he started to call my name when he wanted to go out and walk on sand, ' _Kai-ssi! Come with me!'_ almost like a kid, he screamed from the door.

We would sit very close to the other, our hands brushing, but our eyes would fix on the line where the sky and the sun meet. Whatever was happening was unspoken.

"See that line?" he said once pointing at the horizon. "Notice the way the sky and the sea look like they are so close together, you could say they are holding hands, but they are actually far apart. Only staring from here you may think they are near. Isn't it fascinating? How two things that appear so close are still so far from each other?"

"The earth is round," I giggled, and he rolled his eyes.

"I know, and we can only see as far as our size allows us to. Are we too small or is the world too big? In any way, neither can change, we can only adapt to the situation. If I could fly, I want to fly one day, and see far beyond what we see right now."

Beomgyu-hyung talked a lot about interesting things, he could keep going for hours and hours until the moon became visible to the eye. I listened well, and whenever I talked, he listened well too, we were quiet and loud.

Sometimes he walked too fast, and whenever I ended up far back, he would always say _'I can't wait for you forever'_ but he would still wait even when I walked slower. He laughed loudly, I still remember the sound of his laugh.

"Is there a reason why you hate the sunset so much?" the giggle came from his mouth, he covered it in hopes of not letting out the crackle that followed, he failed as usual. _Oh, his laugh_ , yes he laughed a lot. "Did I say anything wrong?" but he looked at me with an eye-smile.

"It is scary," he covered his red face. "Why would the sun have to go red every time? What's the point when it looks so pretty in yellow."

"But it still looks pretty in red, even when you are scared of it."

He looked at me with squinted eyes. “Not all pretty things are for me to see.”

“But you can see me,” I let out, in an attempt of… I wasn’t sure of what, I couldn't give it a name. There are words that just feel right to say when you are laughing with someone while the sun goes down. Gladly he didn’t beat me up with it.

“I can see _some_ , all but the red ones, so don't wear red and I'll see you later,” he walked away without looking at me, and I was satisfied with that, for reasons far ahead of my understanding at the time, because I was oblivious and hopeless.

Back in the house, when he was too tired of posing and standing straight, he would sit and press the keys of an old-looking piano. It had become a habit of his when I painted, to walk away and leave, to come back whenever he wanted to, to ask of me whatever he wanted to. Once he asked,

"Do you know how to play?"

“I grew between artists, of course I know,” I wasn’t lying, my family used to love anything artistic, and all of them played an instrument, it was me, the one in charge of the piano, and the one who spent the most time playing.

“Will you play it for me?”

"Once I finish painting your vest, hyung." I said, pressing the brush with blue paint to the canvas.

"No, do it now."

I complied in the end, retaining my need to smile at the requests.

He sat beside me when I played an old song my father had taught me. I didn't see his face, but I think I know how it looked… he probably had his eyes shaped into moons and smiled slightly because he used to get a little shy when I made him smile, so he usually looked away for me not to see how his eyes wrinkled.

This time he didn't look away, I am sure.

He looked at me.

From then on I started playing the piano for him. He sat beside me every time and dragged his hands around to mess with the keys. Hyung waited for a little expecting my reaction, but I laughed it off, and because he kept looking at me with starry eyes (he would deny this), not once I got mad.

There is a sentence that repeats constantly in my diary, and rightly so, because indeed, whatever he said, whatever he did and whatever he felt could be seen in,

 _'His_ eyes'.

Then his mouth.

He was a fast talker, and he knew millions of places. When his birthday was near he couldn't shut up about it, he talked to me about the meadow and how much he wanted us to walk there. He talked too about the infinite amount and variety of gifts he wanted to receive.

 _'Ah, Beomgyu-hyung! I can't give you much right now, I hope I could.'_ I wrote in my diary for I wouldn’t dare to tell him that I wanted to give him everything in my hands, but everything I had was bottles of painting and brushes.

His birthday came with a high-pitched scream and a knocking on my door. "Hurry up, we will walk a long way!" the sun wasn't even out, but his voice was.

He put on a white hat on me the exact moment I walked out, he tied the soft lace below my chin and asked me to tie his.

"Black suits you," I said while my hands found their way under his throat, tying the black lace. He was by a few inches, smaller than me, and I tried hard not to brush my fingers against his skin because the soft touch would only cause me pain.

I had been thinking about it for days, about touching the face that I only knew by sight. It was tempting to know more, to feel more, of the texture I supposed was soft.

We went for a picnic in the meadow, he packed it all in a small hamper. The smell of lavender led our path, tiny flowers were scattered around and the hills were that of a brilliant green, the kind I only saw in foreign paintings. Our sky was light blue.

“This is nice,” I twirled, _free_. “What’s like living here?”

"Now it's nice, I wasn’t fond of nature as a child, I hate bugs and insects, but leaving it all besides, it is peaceful,” he sighed. “I used to run the hills from the top to the bottom with a childhood friend. He won every time because his legs were longer, though I was always better at holding on.”

"Is he not visiting you anymore?"

Beomgyu-hyung smiled, a slight tint of sadness in his eyes. "He left Brittany."

“So you never knew anything about him after?”

“He must be living in a tiny house far from here with the man he loves, we used to talk about our dreams and the way we wanted to live our lives, he wanted a cottage in the woods, the river running beside it and a weeping willow… I painted the place for him,” he talked with love and with slight regret, slowly, softly.

“Does remembering hurt?”

He nodded. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t remember.”

There were many questions I couldn’t dare to ask, I suffocated them in my throat and deleted their trace in my mind. Beomgyu-hyung was, undoubtedly, full of stories and beautiful words. I wanted to hear them all, and write them all down, memorize them even, as much as I did with his face.

He took my hand that day, he laced our fingers slowly trying to fit his in the empty spaces between mine. I was always curious as to why our fingers had such indents, and at that moment I thought the only explanation for the existence of such empty spaces, was to fill them with the fingers of someone else. _His_ , in my case.

I didn't know holding someone's hand felt that way. I had held many people's hands and hugged many people's bodies, yet the feeling wasn't the same. It felt like a bond of unspoken closeness, of words that are trapped in our bodies and can be felt through our hands.

We walked around Dinan, a small town of wooden houses and gravel paths near the meadow, the scent of nature and flowers surrounded us, lavender was predominant but roses shone brighter.

"Do you like roses, hyung?"

"If you want to give me a rose, bring it with all, and its thorns," he looked at me, bearing a smile on his face and tenderness in his eyes. That was the face he made when mine turned confused, I could notice he was endeared.

"What do you want the thorns for?"

"I don't, but the rose does. One must not take away what's not from them," he laid on a wall and looked up at me without letting our hands part. "Roses grow thorns because they are inherently delicate, not because they don't want to be held, and even if their petals can be tainted with a single touch, their beauty doesn't go away."

"You always say things like that, and you talk with beautiful words while staring at me with dazzling eyes, held in such an alluring face." He laughed quietly, shrinking with his eyes closed.

"You always look at me, with all my imperfections, and turn them into art of some kind, into spoken and written words, or graphite and colored drabbles."

We used to fight like that, with tons of words we said jokingly but fully meant.

"Roses bloom prettily, and even with thorns, they are worth to be painted, gifted and admired, hyung."

"Kai-ssi… don't get lost in what you see," he laid on the grass near and looked up at the clouds, they floated shaping and reshaping in the sky. I followed and laid beside him, "humans are vain, they walk on grass and cut down trees, but they would never step on a brilliant rose with ease. Humans step on bugs, and follow flies to die, but would think twice before stepping on a caterpillar who molts, because it will become a butterfly at some point. There are few, very few humans who care in the same way, who see with the same eyes the beauty of life instead of the ravishing outer beauty," he looked at me, he didn't avert his gaze like past times, "however, I do not judge, we've written millions of poems about roses and butterflies and very few about flies and grass."

"Is this what you think about at night before sleeping, hyung?"

"No, that's what I think during the day, at night I think about you."

There was much I didn't know about the boy laying by my side, and I had too little of a time to know as much as I wanted. As the old lady once said to me, _he's not always like that,_ he wasn't this or that, but this _and_ that, a brat and the men with the most wholesome heart, cold stares and warm eyes _._ I still wonder why she looked at us grow closer and kept quiet when Ms. Choi walked around, she never spoke about how we looked at each other when eating together, or how we 'accidentally' brused fingers.

We walked back to his house in silence, with the sun going down while pushing each other slightly on the way and giggling just a little.

I can’t point to the time we started getting closer, or the time I started feeling something, because there wasn’t one, but we spent too much time near, and very very little apart, it was natural. We talked a lot, we walked a lot. So I left him to eat that night while I walked back to find the rose I had seen on our way home, crimson red was left over his white bed, along with a note.

_"May my rose's birthday be memorably happy. I hope this is a red you are able to see without fear."_

Beomgyu was much like a rose, and I was there for the mere reason to admire him. To frame his petals and thorns.

_His heart._

He started to trust me more. He showed me a place up high in the tower, a room at the very top with a single window that showered with light the room, the paint stains on the floor and the big canvases leaning on the walls. Those were the paintings he never talked about, so I dared to ask.

“Who are they?” male portraits and beautiful ocean paintings scattered around.

“Soobin-hyung,” he pointed at the painting of a boy whose eyes were crescents much like his smile, but his hair was blue like the sky and the ocean behind his face. My confused expression must have made him giggle and instantly reply to the unspoken question. "He was like the ocean: calm and tender, but he also had wild waves from time to time. His hair is blue because that's the color that reminds me of him.”

“And him?” the one of yellow hair, sitting on a golden chair and with eyes made a line from smiling too bright.

“Yeonjun-hyung. He was… the sun. He shined brightly in a pitch-black universe, his ways were unique much like him and the world had no chance against what he had to offer, for he was too blinding yet eye-catching. He made me laugh, he made me feel warm, so he's yellow.”

There was one man of brown hair, a painting at the very back, in a small canvas. I pointed to it.

He fidgeted with the ring in his hand that one he never took away, the family ring. "My brother," he murmured with his head low, and after a while of me not knowing exactly what to do, he smirked. "There are not many portraits as you can see, but the very few I have, all make me feel…"

"You loved them that much? To paint their portraits in such big canvases, to take the time and the effort to get all those details," from their lashes to every strand of hair and the iris of their eyes, it was noticeable the amount of work and passion he had put on them, either he loved to paint or he loved the people, maybe both, probably both.

"I still love them."

Since our time was known to be short, we both tried our best to never mention it, but it was hard not to think, and not to talk. It ended up in a mess each time.

"Are we destined, Beomgyu-hyung?" I asked while we laid on the grass as usual.

"I hope," _We knew we weren’t,_ but it was reassuring to think otherwise, to hope for a future in which we would escape together and through the world.

"Beomgyu-ssi, I'll miss you when you are gone, when your scent no longer reaches my nose and our hands no longer touch. I'll miss tracing your face with you in front of me, and playing the piano with you by my side."

"I hope you do miss me, even if I sound greedy for your attention. I hope you miss me because I'll miss you too, when I wake up in the morning and no one longer walks with me to the ocean, and when I look to the side and your smile won't greet me. I'll miss you too when I am posing for a painting and your eyes are not the ones looking through me."

The wind ran through tall trees, it slowed down on the green grass, and beams of sunlight were falling over his face, _his face_ , I could never not look at it and not get lost.

"Beomgyu-hyung, when will you leave?" It had been bothering me for so long since I started noticing how with each brush and color added to his portrait, the affection for him grew as well.

 _Never,_ I wanted him to reply. I wanted us to stay there forever, under the warmth of trees and sunlight, laying beside the other looking at the clouds and listening to the birds singing. I wanted us to be together for as long as life itself allowed us, not time, not people.

"I've not received the letter with the date yet, and you still have time to finish the portrait." To this day I am sure he lied because he didn't look at me in the eye like he used to.

“Beomgyu-ssi…” I said, my chest was hurting from words begging to escape, “painting you hurts,” he looked at me with furrowed eyebrows and squinted eyes, “painting you hurts so much. It pains me to see your face when I close my eyes. I've memorized your face so well, the way your hair falls over it too, and it breaks me to know there will be a day when I will only see your face in my dreams,

don’t leave.”

“Kai-ssi—”

“I’ve been memorizing every detail in your face, the faded mole on the left side of your mouth, the bags under your eyes, the way your lashes fall on your rosy cheeks, or how your skin looks like porcelain, your jawline curves up, but it is sharp anyway and the bump of your Adam’s apple in your throat looks just like the hills we like to walk around. The cute way you pronounce words and how you talk softly and look down when you are ashamed or sad, but your chin goes all the way up when you get excited, you play with that silver ring on your finger when you are nervous or thinking about your brother and how your eyes shine bright when we are together, Beomgyu-ssi… painting you hurts worse than a dagger in my chest, because you, all of you I know. I am not sure if I can’t let you go.”

His eyes went down to his ring as usual, and he held my hand between his without looking up to me. “Don’t let me go, Kai,” he begged, much I had.

My eyes were hurting too, by the tears running from them. Like a lagoon of crystalline water was making its way into our eyes and our hearts.

"May our bittersweet love be memorable for us, hyung." _that's all I want._

"Kai…" he breathed deep, brushing his eyes with his hand, "I don't want to say I hope you forget me, I don't want you to forget about me, remember me, remember my hands, my face, remember my mouth and my eyes, remember my voice,

remember me, every detail, every word I've ever said, I'll remember too."

I didn't know a man could love another man this way, I wasn't taught about that small possibility, and I wasn't prepared for me to fall like that. Between my hands, I held his warm red face. He looked at me confused but nevertheless, he smiled.

"I love you," I said and leaned down to kiss him on the lips, a chaste kiss was all that I needed from him. He placed one of his hands on mine, and the other brushed my hair.

"I've fallen for you many times today, Kai. I will fall for you tomorrow too, and I am sure I will fall even when you are not around, for these are the best days of my life, and you make the best part of it."

That night I wrote about it in my diary, I hurried my hands and my tint to write as fast as they could, so I wouldn't miss a thing I wouldn't want to forget.

_'We kissed again and again, and I think there will be no day I won't miss him after today.'_

His portrait was finished days later. He was sitting on a huge chair with his vest looking like a night sky full of golden stars. He looked beautiful, like a prince. I showed it to him.

"I am proud of you, Kai," he said with a smile on his face, slightly crooked. His eyes, on the other side, were crystalline. "I like it immensely."

"It took me a while to get a hold of you."

"But you are able to paint me now."

“That's because I love you,” he nodded.

His mother liked the portrait too, she screamed with happiness and left the day after. Our last days were more or less of a mess, of us running away from people's eyes and walking on the sand. Of the sun hiding when we kissed and the waves crashing when we ran from the breeze. There were many things I would've loved to tell him, but I was content as long as we were together.

He walked inside my room at night, and made a space for him on my bed, surrounding himself with my arms. I let him move me around to his will, so he could be comfortable in there.

"Kai," he whispered while caressing my hands. "I've been painting you too. I hope you are sleeping because if you are not then I will die from embarrassment," the chuckle died down in his throat and his nose started to run just a little.

He was sobbing in my arms and kept talking.

"Painting you is so hard, you are extremely beautiful, did you know? You look like a walking work of art and there is no input I can give to such beauty, there is nothing I would ever change. I've been thinking a lot about— us, and… I am sorry I can only give us this much time."

He talked for a while, and I fell asleep to the sound of his calming voice. I can't remember it all, just that we woke up beside the other. His half-asleep face hidden in the crook of my neck, his arms that held onto my waist at some point of the night, our tangled legs, and the sound of his morning voice.

"Hi," he said with a smile. I couldn't believe I was able to love such a human, and I was able to hold him and take care of him. For as little as we could, I wanted us to be together.

"Did you sleep well, my rose?"

"Better than ever, _mon petit prince,_ " he smiled, there was no time left for us not to smile around the other. There was no time for us to debate on silly pet names or uninteresting topics.

Because the time we had was to accept all the love we could before parting ways.

I took in enough love to carry me through many years in my life.

I left on May 14, with sad eyes I held my baggage in front of the door where he stood.

"I'll leave now," I mumbled.

"I know," his voice cracked, but it was almost unnoticeable, not for me who knew him well. I would dare to say, I knew him too well.

His arms surrounded me in a rush, and his face hid in the crook of my neck, he kissed it quickly to not let people notice. Ms. Choi looked at us up from the stairs, she was probably more confused than anyone else in the room, for the way her son clung to my body, with the strength of his whole being.

He didn't say a word after, and he didn't walk behind me either. I walked out that door with less than I had come with. Much more less.

There was only one time after that, that I knew about him, after many years when I walked into an art exposition, and someone looked at me confused.

"There is something familiar about you, have we ever met?" a man said, his eyes squinted looking at me from head to toe.

I denied and kept walking through the crowd of people, the walls were crammed with paintings of all sorts, but there was one at the very end of the hall.

_coup de foudre_

That was the title. A man stood in front of the ocean, walking barefoot on the sand between red and blue clouds, his hair was brown with lights of golden paint, and he was smiling brightly.

It was me.

And _he_ was the artist.

That was our beach, our sand, our days.

I asked around if anyone knew where he was, if I could meet him just once. But they all said he left the country.

"He hasn't come in years, but he left dozens of paintings behind, we exhibited them around though many of them have been sold." The man who ran the place told me.

"Where is the money being sent to?" there had to be a way to find him.

"All the money is for the maintenance of this place…"

"And that painting," I signaled to the one of me, "has no one wanted to buy it?"

"Oh," he laughed, "the painter said that's the only out of all his paintings that should never be sold, it shall be kept inside these walls. We asked for a reason, but he just replied _‘He’ll know_ ’, he was quite a grumpy man, and he replied with short sentences."

The remaining paintings were all the places we went to, the meadow, Danin, the pink granite rocks we used to walk down every evening and the shoreline, the red sun he refused to look at, the red sky he hated to see so much, in them all a light shadow of two people walking could be seen in the corner.

Those must have been us.

I've been trying to paint him again, and though I am sure I get the lines right, I can't get the feeling. I can't quite catch his annoying smile or his stupid pretty eyes. Writing is all I have left.

On the very last page of the diary I tinted when we met, a diary full of him, I wrote:

_Today I hope I won't ever lose these pages, so when I am old and my memory starts to fade, I can go back._

_To us._

I know we loved each other. Though he never explicitly said it, I know he loved me too.

There was no way he didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * "And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content to have known me." from the last chapter of _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
>   * [_coup de foudre:_](https://www.thoughtco.com/coup-de-foudre-1371171)a sudden unforeseen event, in particular an instance of love at first sight.
> 

> 
> I remember sobbing for a while after watching portrait of a lady on fire, and hoping there was a book, yet there wasn't. Though the beomkai somewhere in the world existed since june (after joaffm), until august I settled on france, and polaof was shown to me later on october, a journey trying to write it, but I had many other projects due before the end of 2020. I am happy to finally set it free.
> 
> This whole thing went from being titled _mon petit prince_ , to being written in a diary-entry structure (which means i wrote almost every diary hk wrote lol), to this, so i'm glad if you are reading it and liked it at least a bit <3
> 
> **[cc](https://curiouscat.me/apricty) | [twt](https://twitter.com/NlNGYU)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The name of a boy he can't let himself forget starts to fade in the depths of his mind. Beomgyu recalls fragments of their days together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may continue, [To the Sky](https://open.spotify.com/track/0icJXGequFzOB37jNOLaeU?si=kVcpLetgQD-IGiun4aTe3w).

I loved three men in my life.

The very first time I fell in love was with Choi Soobin, I fell for him the way a feather falls from a flying bird, it swings, steady, slowly, and it surely reaches the ground at some point. But Soobin was my best friend. He walked around my home, sat on my bed, and let himself be painted by me; he was my best model, painting his skin was like painting velvet, his hair was almond just like his eyes, shiny and alive, I would never forget how the image of him laying on my bed with his eyes fixed on my face used to send shivers through my spine.

Choi Soobin was safe, calm home. I loved him for a long time, but he didn't love me _that way._ He got a boyfriend, much to my surprise, and they escaped France months later.

The second man I ever loved was stunning, elegant, brilliant, I would run out of words to describe his beauty, his mien, the way he stood out of the crowd, and the way many of them called him 'too much'. He was _too much_ in all the senses of it. He liked all the extravagant food, clothes—he liked to say he was ahead of our time—and he went all the way in with everything he was passionate about.

Choi Yeonjun was a chaotic warm night in the city, and I loved him deeply, but he loved the world more than he loved me. I never saw him again after he left.

I can remember both of them well, however, I have a hard time recalling the memories from the very last man, his name feels familiar to my lips but distant to my mind, then if I hear it, it pains my soul remembering it; nevertheless, _his face_ , if I try collecting pieces and places from my dreams, I can feel it near my hands, and I get to caress his cheeks, they are soft.

Everything comes back to me when my hands are at work like it's engraved in the movement and touch of my palms. I've written on many pages fragments of us, one hundred pieces I’ve lost, but I do not remember they were left. That's the main reason I am writing this again.

For _him_.

The third man I ever loved…

I didn't mean to love.

I was twenty-one years old back then, New Year around the corner, snow was falling, it covered the streets I liked to step on for my daily night walks. It didn't bother me, it felt nice under my shoes, like walking on cotton, and it was tiring, like running on sand. I walked out of home to think that day.

Mom used to say I'd go crazy if I kept thinking, if I kept asking why and hows, if I was too curious and wandered alone for too long, she said I needed a friend, and she kind of got one for me.

When I got back home, she dropped the news.

"You have to welcome him," I didn't understand, _who_? "He is coming in a few months," she continued, "and the painting has to be sent before March, just so you know."

"A painter? Is he good?"

"He is, that's what Margaret told me."

"You listen to Margaret a bit too much, you never question her." It was her usual I-won’t-hear-any-more face, distorted. She tried too hard to fit, and I tried too much to please her.

The month went by like that till the day _he_ arrived, until snow wasn't falling from a darkened sky anymore and the only remaining feeling was that of cold air, the ocean beside home made it worse, but the sound of crashing waves helped me sleep.

I can recall, given enough time, the way his face was shaped, like a diamond, of sharp ends but soft curves. The mole on his neck, that one was his favorite, but my favorite was the one right above his upper lip on the left corner and the ones under his eyebrows. _His eyes_ were brown, deep, and shape-shifting, he had an easy way to transmit feelings through them, they were open doors. Unlike his mouth, you had to ask for permission. I liked asking permission to kiss him, he never denied, he never denied anything to me. He laughed a lot and liked running on sand, we were a lot alike. But he wasn't much of the curious type, yet he was a good listener.

When I do this, his face starts to form in my head again, his profile first, the crooked nose and the curly hair flying free in the air, his full cheeks, his skin, soft to the touch, the smell of lavender, which we both loved to die. Everything but his name…

I guess I've tried too hard to forget.

Last night was February 13, and there was _a thing_ running in my mind, like a small kid trying to convince their parents to let him play outside. Then I remembered.

We met that day.

I was an awful brat to him when we first met. He held onto me too tight; maybe, if it would've been me in his place… I would've left, I wouldn't have been so kind, nor so patient, so now I wonder if he still waits, if he still remembers.

"I don't want my damn portrait painted!" I screamed at my mother during those nights my room was the only place I found comfort in.

"Be considerate!" she screamed back at me, "he's come a long way!"

"Force me."

"Your brother isn't here anymore, I need you to take responsibility, for our family," her voice broke every time she talked about him, but she still used his memory like some kind of weapon.

"Maybe I should run away just like him."

Those were the biggest fights I had ever had with her. I was never the type to fight back, instead, I was used to listening and trying to do whatever she wanted, so she wouldn't mind my business, maybe I should've left home sooner, but the farthest I could go was the coast.

The coast was our place, we used to sit near each other in silence, he stared at me and drew my face in that tiny book he carried all places. His hands ended up darkened by the graphite. We never really talked until he started painting my portrait, though he tried hard to make me talk, then he wasn’t able to shut me up.

He probably didn’t expect me to talk a lot, or to care a lot. We were two men trying our best, two men who fell in love but would not be able to remain together, was I a coward? He wouldn’t say yes, we would hurt and keep going.

I remember the time I started painting him. He used to walk far from me when he felt too tired of sitting on the sand, he would run on the shoreline and try to not get caught by the water, like a child.

He was so small, my little _Kai._

I painted him walking there, near the sea while he looked at me from afar, his hair remained brown with golden lights. I loved the rawest version of him, and the sides he didn’t notice. His delicate hands, the hands of a pianist that fluttered with his walk. I liked holding his hands more than walking on sand, even more than painting.

And I love painting so much, but I miss him ten times more, and I miss his hands, and his face, and the way his words and presence made my worries fade away. So tracing his edges, his wide lips, his eyes that always looked for me, and the way his hair fell over his forehead… it reminds me of the time we were near, and the portrait I never wanted you to finish.

In some ways, he always felt far away, like I couldn’t reach and even if I did, I’d have to walk back to the start, to the point where we didn’t know each other.

 _Kai Kamal…_ I still try to remember. I keep inside my pockets the memory of what we used to be, and of what I’m sure we still are, even if I can’t see you.

I remember the shore and the sun going down, the rose you once gave me, and the emerald fields full of colorful flowers. The sky that colored our faces, that one we walked under with our fingers laced.

 _Mon petit prince,_ who held my heart and painted my face. The man who belonged inside of castles and golden vests, whose portrait will belong to museums to be praised until eternity. I will go back and find you there, you, me, _us_.

If it’s not our love, then let it be what’s left of it. Our paintings, our places.

 _Kai Kamal Huening,_ that’s his name.

I loved three men in my life, but I never loved any of them the way I loved _him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, sharing or liking, it's always a pleasure for me to read what you have to say, any feedback is well-received.<3 And happy valentines! I hope I can one day write a longer work for you, though I am not sure if people enjoy the first-person narrative, I try my best with it because, for me, it feels like poetry, and I love poetry.
> 
> May beomkai be together in the fics to come.
> 
> **[cc](https://curiouscat.me/apricty) | [twt](https://twitter.com/NlNGYU)**


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